#Phillippe Noiret

[freudianblunders]

Cinema Paradiso, 1988

Cinema is Life, and Life is Cinema

Cinema Paradiso is a film about the magic of cinema and one that is closest to my heart. This nostalgic coming-of-age story explores the relationship between Toto (Salvatore Cascio) and Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the cinema projectionist in the small Sicilian town of Giancaldo in the years following World War II. The narrative unfolds in flashback from Toto's point of view, structured around three stages of his life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Directed with a great heart by Giuseppe Tornatore, the story is drawn from his childhood memories and was shot in Bagheria, Sicily, his hometown. The film went on to win several awards, including the 1989 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Many people attribute this film to igniting their cinephile journey, which is true for me as well. At its core, Cinema Paradiso is about love—love for family and love for cinema. It captures what cinema meant as a collective social experience and serves as a poignant reminder of why we fell in love with it in the first place. It is one of those rare films that can genuinely be described as cathartic. While many people visit Sicily for their love of The Godfather—a trip that’s certainly on my bucket list—I also wish to visit the place for Cinema Paradiso.

Widely considered one of the best Italian films ever made, the film features incredible performances by Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, and Pupella Maggio. Not to mention, the exquisite musical score by Ennio Morricone is one for the ages and will remain etched in my heart forever.

As with every piece of entertainment, Cinema Paradiso eventually comes to an end, and it does so in the most soul-stirring way possible. While finishing this review, I can’t help but ask myself: Will any film ever make me feel this way again?

[de-gueules-au-lion-d-or]

« Le voyage est court, essayons de la faire en première classe »

Phillippe Noiret

[thesmilingfish]

MAY 25

Even though it’s a holiday, still chores to do even if everyone else forgot. We’re also in the middle of head warning for the week - today was 93, tomorrow is supposed to be 96 here. Of course where I work it’s even hotter - 102 on Tuesday, 99 on Wednesday and 95 on Thursday. Good week to go back she says sarcastically.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) - I’m a sucker for Pressburger and Powell films. I haven’t seen all of their collaborations but I’m slowly working my way through. I don’t know what it was but I felt myself smiling for the first half hour or so. There was just such a delightful energy about the movie. It’s up there with A Matter of Life and Death as my favorites of their films. Just lovely.

The Night of the Generals (1967) - Yes, I watch a lot of WWII movies. It’s not on purpose, I assure you. They just tend to have an amazing roster of actors and this movie is no exception - Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Donald Pleasance, Tom Courtenay , Phillippe Noiret, Charles Grey and a cameo appearance by Christopher Plummer. This is as much a war movie as it is a murder mystery. In 1942 a Polish prostitute, who was also a German agent, is murdered in an incredibly brutal way and the only clue our Major Grau has to go on is an eyewitness account by someone who only saw the pants of the murderer as he fled the scene - military pants as worn by a general. He has three suspects - three generals who have something to hide and as soon as he gets close he is promoted and sent to Paris by one of the generals. But is the case closed? No of course not! I really liked this movie, which kept me on my toes throughout.

The Cottage (2008) - Reece Shearsmith and Andy Serkis star as brothers who are involved in the kidnapping of a gangsters step-daughter and about half way through it turns into a slasher gore-fest of a movie. I wanted to see the movie because of the two stars but slasher horror films are one of my least favorite genres so I wasn’t really happy with the last half and especially the end.

The Fountain (2006) - A Darren Aronofsky film starring Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman. It’s a visually stunning work with a deeper meaning than I was able to grasp. I felt bored through most of it, not really caring about the characters. I had to read reviews afterward to have some of the movie explained to me. I don’t consider myself to be a stupid person, but I do expect the movie to do some of the heavy lifting in order for me to understand what’s going on.

Sand Castle (2017) - This is a much more straightforward movie. It’s set in Iraq and follows a small squad of American soldiers as they try to repair a damaged water line that the American forces destroyed during the invasion. You’d think by all the gif sets on Tumblr that Henry Cavill is the star, but he plays a rather large supporting role. The star of the film is Nicolas Hoult who does a fine job. There are a number of “hoorah” moments but for a war movie, this was rather restrained. The action sequences are good and there’s a nice amount of tension but if it weren’t for Mr. Cavill I wouldn’t have even given this movie a second glance.  Story of my life.

[cinemacinemas-fr]

RT @ClassicFilm2: « Le voyage est court, essayons de la faire en première classe » Pensée pour le grand Phillippe Noiret https://t.co/ltzSkMTiS9

RT @ClassicFilm2: « Le voyage est court, essayons de la faire en première classe » Pensée pour le grand Phillippe Noiret https://t.co/ltzSkMTiS9

— Cinémannonce (@cinema_cinemas) Nov 24, 2022

via Twitter https://twitter.com/cinema_cinemas November 24, 2022 at 01:37AM https://twitter.com/cinema_cinemas/status/1595577285914009600

[notesonfilm1]

A young couple played Phillipe Noiret and Sylvia Monfort arrive from Paris to mend their relationship. He’s a native of the Pointe Courte, the `place where fishermen like and work in Sète, in the South of France, where the film is set. He´s arrived first and has gone to the train station for the past five days in the hope that she´ll arrived so he can show her where he´s from.  She’s a Parisian and has come to break up with him after four years of marriage.

La Pointe Courte is his home and he hopes that by getting to know it she´ll come to understand him better. And the film is as much about the place and its people as it is about the couple. We see they’re fishermen, at odds with the authorities about fishing in a lagoon, getting around the rules and paying the price for it when they get caught. We get to see a whole way of life, eating, working, mending, the men’s jousts and the women’s work too. Varda has an eye for the details of hanging up the washing, mending the socks.

The place is beautiful but harsh too, the work is hard, the room families live in are mean and cramped; a child dies, one sees a dead cat buffeted by the waves, near the end a child pleads with its parents to not drown all the cats and at least leave one alive. Varda has an eye for that which is beautiful, striking, notable. One can see this film as a silent film and still enjoy it. Alain Resnais did the editing and he overlaps dialogue with images, poetic ones, that powerfully evoke place and a way of life.

The central couple are filmed as if in a Bergman film (though this is before Bergman made these types of shots famous in films like Persona), their faces forming ninety degree angles, his looking at her, she looking at the horizon; everything overly ‘arty’ as they endlessly discuss their relationship, each other, the differences between how they love their love or the other, insisting that it’s not the same thing.

Their love story is counterpoised with that of a young couple whose relationship is first forbidden by the girl’s father and finally permitted to be, partly because of his skill at jousting, by the girl’s cantankerous father. Phillippe Noiret is very young and in some shots almost handsome as the young native of the town who’s escaped this life he loves and moved to Paris. A film that is beautiful to see and beautiful to hear, with light regional songs edited to the gentle rhythms of a way of life. There’s a pragmatic kindness in evoking the every day and making it significant, in the making of  poetry out of poor people´s quotidian life. It´s a lovely film.

José Arroyo

La Pointe Courte (Agnès Varda, France, 1955) A young couple played Phillipe Noiret and Sylvia Monfort arrive from Paris to mend their relationship. He’s a native of the Pointe Courte, the `place where fishermen like and work in Sète, in the South of France, where the film is set.

[tokyozus-blog]

Coup de Torchon

Bertrand Tavernier nació un 25 de abril de 1941, en Lyon, durante la ocupación nazi de Francia.

Su padre, el publicista y escritor René Tavernier, colaboraba de forma clandestina en un diario que pretendía mantener alta la moral de la Resistencia. A Tavernier se le quedó grabada la firme convicción de su padre de que "la pluma es más poderosa que la espada"

Terminada la II Guerra Mundial, Tavernier se fue aficionando cada vez más al cine, llegando el punto de que cuando tenía 13 años ya tenía bastante claro que quería ser director. 

Le apasionaban especialmente los directores americanos, tales como John Ford, Joseph Losey, Samuel Fuller y William A. Wellman, y también cita entre sus favoritos a sus compatriotas Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir y Jacques Becker. Estudió Derecho en la Sorbona, pero abandonó las aulas en cuanto tuvo oportunidad de ponerse a trabajar como asistente de Jean-Pierre Melville en Léon Morin, prêtre.

Esa primera toma de contacto con la industria del cine no resultó como él esperaba, porque el director le llegó a decir que no valía para esa tarea y que se dedicara a ejercer como jefe de prensa. 

Sin embargo, no se rinde y más tarde, gracias a sus contactos en el mundo del cine, le surge la oportunidad de debutar como director para los filmes colectivos Les baisers y La chance et l'amour. Ésta vez los resultados fueron positivos, sin embargo, se tarda 10 años en poder debutar en el largometraje, El relojero de Saint-Paul, adaptación de una novela criminal de Georges Simenon, esta obra logró interesar a Phillippe Noiret, por entonces consagrado como gran figura del cine patrio por títulos como La gran comilona, Topaz, y sobre todo Zazie en el metro. 

A Noiret le apasionó su trabajo y le dio al realizador su palabra de que le apoyaría hasta el final, y así fue hasta su muerte, tras el fallecimiento del actor en 2006, Tavernier redactó una emotiva carta en la que explicaba que le debía al intérprete y a su lealtad el haber podido dedicarse al cine.

Tavernier llevó el libreto de su debut a todas las productoras que operaban en Francia, obteniendo negativas encadenadas, algunas de ellas insultantes. "Durante más de dieciocho meses, mientras me rechazaban y humillaban, él me apoyó, estuvo en mi rincón, sin renegar de su compromiso", comentaba. "Yo, sin embargo, nunca había hecho antes una película, y si él hubiera abandonado el barco, hoy no estaría aquí".

Tavernier había desarrollado en sus primeros trabajos un estilo propio, pero cambió en cierta forma con “La muerte en directo”, que es técnicamente más arriesgado, por sus numerosos travellings, y que desarrolla una historia de ciencia ficción.

Coup de torchon 

Coup de torchon es una representación inspirada de la novela de Jim Thompson Pop. Habla de la historia de un jefe inepto de policía convertido en un desalmado asesino y su descuidada amante del sur de los Estados Unidos, es la obra maestra de Bertrand Tavernier.

Y sin el dogmatismo de algunas de sus películas, sin la exposición demasiado evidente de ideas izquierdistas encontradas en sus primeras películas, se usa mucho el humor negro y se las arregla para mezclar este humor con las ideas personales de Tavernier, el guión fue co-escrito con Jean Aurenche (Juegos Prohibidos), lo cual aseguraba la calidad. Esta es una película cruel, pero está tan bellamente hecha que te absorbe de principio a fin, al ser testigo del punto de quiebre de un hombre e Isabelle Huppert es una increíble mujer fatal.

[moviemosaics]

Cinema Paradiso

directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988

[dreamers-of-neverland]

Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.

Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?

Alfredo: No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.

-Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

[televisedwar]

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt. 235/365

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

[canadianbeerandpostmodernism]

"Zazie Dans La Metro" (1960) an early film by Louis Malle, is a farcical look at Parisian society and the hypocrisy and superficiality of the middle class.  Like a lot of French films of the era, it could  also have just be an excuse for ridiculous car chases and sexual innuendo.  At least it introduced the world to the amazing voice of Phillippe Noiret

[thevariations]

On a volé la cuisse de Jupiter, 1980 (Francis Perrin, Catherine Alric, Philippe Noiret, Annie Girardot)

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Massimo Troissi and Philippe Noiret in Il Postino (1994)

[thevariations]

Ripoux 3, 2003 (Philippe Noiret)